Chapter Text
A/N: Replies to reviews on FF.n follow chapter and footnotes.
James handed over his wand to the wizard and tried not to roll his eyes as the man’s automated tape measure went for his inseam. He resisted the urge to ask if his cock size would be a good metric as well, mostly because when he had asked it of Ollivander, both his wife and the wandcrafter had so verbally cut him to the quick that he wished he had had a vat of metaphorical essence of dittany.
“No, this wand is all wrong for you now, not surprising since you’ve lost someone.”
James’s forehead wrinkled as the wizard haphazardly tossed the wand aside.
The man kept his shop differently than he was used to with Ollivander. Instead, his building was a dodecagon with the twelve major types of woods[1] and the six different types of cores he regularly used that filled the walls while a lower level had a visible work area and the walls filled with wands displayed with little placards, discussing how they were different from his normal crafted wands.
“Yes, downstairs we go. I think Sapient pearwood should be the wood but what core?”
“Sapient pearwood? I’ve never heard of that before.”
“They’re extinct, they were a lovely tree that were the basis for the myths of entmoots since they would find crossed ley lines and dance and sing. Due to the wind blowing their their bark which produced natural whistles with lovely natural whistle peas. In fact, you have two children, yes?”
James nodded and the wizard pressed two ocarinas into his hand. “I make them from the wood that can’t be used for wands. Look at those whorls, beautiful aren’t they?”
James looked down and nodded. They were varnished to accentuate the grain and it looked like each year the hue of the grain shifted slightly.
James put them away carefully. They were a good starting instrument for the two he realized and probably much better than the one he had started on, the zither.
“Thank you. I was wondering about an instrument to start them on soon.”
“Here, try this one.”
James admired the gold and peach hued wood with its surprisingly natural feeling curve to it but it was yanked from his hand almost immediately and replaced.
“I didn’t think thestral hairs would work but they were from your land--try this, a core of ashwinder ash.”
There was a spiral of chocolate light and it was taken from him. “No. Alba spores?”
It did nothing. “Not surprising,” the wandcrafter mused. “It’ll never find anyone. Ah, Atelopus spine.”
The wand looked like a spine but did nothing for James. He barely had time to wonder what atelopus was.
It was three more wands before the next one chimed for him, a pair of spirals coming together and flaring out a bit so the wand had two points. “Ah, Sapient pearwood and liquified occamy silver. I should have realized this was the one for you. Your father gifted me this silver after all.
“Now, for your backup, do you want it to be right hand or left hand? Can you dual cast?”[2]
“I’ve had a bit of training for it. Yeah, I’d like it for my left hand. I could cast fairly well with my old one with my offhand.”
The man nodded and studied the wand carefully, fixing it in his memory. “I’ll have it to you within the week if I’m low on occamy silver. Otherwise it’ll be there to you tomorrow.”
James nodded and left with his new and old wand tucked into his belt sheath.
Sirius held up a spiked Butterbeer to him as he walked into the pub. “New wand?”
James nodded and handed it over.
“Nice design. I’m still good on mine.”
“It has a core of occamy silver. From our hatchery.”
“Not surprising. Your family cornered that market and ruthlessly destroyed the competition then figured out how to violate that law Lily told us about.”
“I think it was conservation of mass? Which she was breaking too when she was becoming a hind[3] animagus,” he said. She had finished her transformation three months after the children were born and weighed three times what she did as a human.
Sirius chuckled, thinking of the children. “When do we start their training to become animagi?”
“Eight?”
Sirius nodded. “Jasmine should take to it well.”
There was no need to discuss Evan’s chances.
James rolled out of bed and pulled on the surprisingly comfortable mundane costume their new instructor called a gi.
As he left his room, he saw Sirius come out of his own room and Sirius’s yawn made James yawn as well. “Oi you bastard, don’t do that!” James said, shoving his friend.
Sirius shoved back as they fell into a group of other new Blackguard recruits.
“Good morning recruits,” a witch said walking into the large gymnasium.
“Today we begin your physical training.” An older wizard began bringing out orange and blue sticks of wood and handed them to the recruits, giving them receipts for their wands for those that forgot and brought them.
“Imagine the blue stick is your main wand and the orange your secondary. Pair off, holding the wands in your hands as fitting.”
James and Sirius stood in front of each other as they saw the instructors and the first move was initiated. Sirius copied it, bringing a slow punch to James’s head that he blocked, bringing his own wand up, aiming it at Sirius’s temple. A beam of light marked Sirius’s head where he was hit by it. “Evaluate what you just learned,” the instructor said. “Repeat. This time, primary attacker, bring head forward, attempting to butt your victim.”
Two hours later, soaking wet, marked with dozens of colors, the recruits were passed out vials of pepper up potion and hit with scourgifies by the instructors.
A new pair of instructors began herding them to their first law class, the recruits grabbing nutrient potions and breakfast bars as they passed the breakfast station.
“You ever wonder if Pomfrey[5] and Slughorn made the potions taste so bad so that we did our best not to end up in the hospital wing?”
“I know they did,” Sirius replied. “I had to chop potion ingredients, they add something called essence of miracle berry to our cauldrons during the cleaning phase. But if you eat a miracle berry then eat regular food, everything tastes sweet. Lily told me about them seventh year, they’re from Africa or something. It’s how she was dieting to fit into her dress. She didn’t tell you?”
James looked annoyed. “No, she didn’t.”
“Well, she was planning a wedding, studying for N.E.W.T.s, and resisting my incredible charms, she couldn’t remember everything.”
James rolled his eyes as he tossed the remnants of his meal into the receptacle which chewed it up and burped mightily, doing the same when Sirius threw his in.
“What’s the point of a garbage can that does that?” someone asked.
“Some magical showing off his transfiguration skills,” James said.
“He should know, he was always showing off that he was a prodigy,” Sirius snarked.
The instructor told them to shut up and began passing out their texts.
Somerled shook the hands of the last parents leaving then turned to his grandchildren, smiling when he saw they had curled up and fallen asleep already.
The play date was an incredible success, he thought to himself. And those apple cinnamon cupcakes she brought? Incredible!
He mused on how much the little girl the Weasleys had brought looked like Jasmine, and so glad of it. Teasing his son about cuckolding someone else was going to make his day, especially since the Weasleys had noticed it as well and Arthur had had Molly beet purple all afternoon
He ate the last cupcake and made a mental note to ask her if she might be interested in a cake shop. If she could decorate half as well as she baked, she could be a wonderful pâtissière, he decided. And profitable.
His Sword and Shield bearers fought off yawns as Nursie and Marilee picked up the twins and carried them to the waiting carriage, a beautifully appointed road coach they had recently (as much as 1913 can be recent) picked up from an estate sale of a mundane noble.
Pulling the carriage were four heavy, black horses, their manes and tails flickering blue and white flames, their eyes electric blue, their hooves sending off sparks as they crashed against the stones that made up the path. The Potters were the only people to have ever successfully tamed demon steeds and the four Nightmares[6] had served the Potters since before the statute of secrecy had been instituted. Now they were only used to move around the grounds.
With the women seated and his men grabbing onto the back, Somerled got in to the carriage and knocked on the wall, letting the driver know to take them back to the manse--they had had the play date in a building near the grove after they opened up a temporary floo so they could arrive that way.
He held his hands out and took Jasmine, smiling as she snuffled against his neck. He and his wife had tried for a daughter for years after James was born but it had been to no avail--aside from the fun.
Dismounting at Thoresby Hall, he helped the women down then walked inside, yawning and stretching, wishing he could take a nap as well.
Inside his office, he opened the door to the common office and found his eleven secretaries hard at work. “Anything I need to sign?”
All save one quickly had stacks of parchments held up and he sighed as he took out his glasses and settled in to look over contacts.
“Headmaster Dumbledore said yes,” the witch in charge of his spirits correspondence said. “Also, the ghost council wishes to speak with you.” All spirits.
“Really? Why?”
“They heard the rumor of a new spirit using spirits as the selling point and wish to discuss it.”
“Are we?”
“No,” she said. “But it sounds like a good idea,” she admitted.
“It does, doesn’t it. Have the boys at the distilleries and breweries put their heads together and see if they can come up with something, maybe a drink that’s pearlescent white and we’ll charm the bottles to make it like they’re empty? If they can, the shop gets a nice bonus and the person who specifically came up with it gets a week or two at the place in Fiji.” A small island hidden by magic almost directly in the center of the grouping of islands, it had been won in a poker game from a Shacklebolt who had thought his Aces and Eights[7] were going to win him the game. Over the years since then they had expanded upon the small house, building up a large C shaped building with a beautiful garden on the inside and a dozen small guest houses and reshaped the beaches and forests to turn it into a British view of a tropical paradise.
Finally done, he saw it was time to go to the Wizengamot for dinner with some colleagues. Grumbling about keeping up appearances and having to make nice with scum that hated his daughter-in-law, he went to change into his robes and strap on one of the Potter blades--a dagger that when drawn from its sheath expanded to sword length--then placed his wand in its matching sheath. He opened a case made of the same wood as his and disapparated.
Sirius dropped down. “I am too old for homework,” he groaned.
“We’re 21 you git,” James said, idly watching the other students, resisting the urge to hex one of the witches that had been trying to flirt with him. “Mundanes go to university for like four to twelve years after they finish their version of Hogwarts.”
“Yeah but not people like us. We’re heirs.”
“Even they do, to become capable of running their estates and the like. They don’t have tutoring programs like we do.” Somerled had made sure James was capable of running the estate before he had even started Hogwarts and when he had let Sirius move in had arranged for a small inheritance for him as well.
Sirius growled. “Wanna go running in the woods tonight?”
“Yeah.”
They pulled themselves up off the grass and headed for dinner.
------
James shifted and Prongs burst through the undergrowth, followed by Padfoot.
An hour later the two shifted back and made their way to the dorms. “Been a long time since we did that.”
James nodded. “We should have a saddle made for me so I can take the twins for a run occasionally.”
Narcissa had to admit that taking her niece shopping was a lot more fun than she had thought it would be. She had thought it would have been like shopping with Draco, dealing with an impatient child. Instead it was Narcissa who was getting impatient though only because she was hungry.
“Dora, dear, the stores will be here after we eat,” she reminded the girl, using a diminutive of the girl’s name since they were shopping in Mundane London.
“Okay,” she agreed, putting away the leather trousers she knew her mother would never let her get.
The two found themselves walking back to the Leaky Cauldron and using the public floo to get to Cabalistic Alley--since she didn’t want to walk a seven year old through Knockturn or take the long way and it was only two knuts for the powder--and were soon seated in Long Jean-Luc Picard’s, the magical world’s equivalent of a fast food restaurant since every meal came with a prize for children and an order was ready within two minutes since the majority were fried dishes.
“I don’t think your mum will let you get those trousers you were looking at. You’d just grow out of them in little time.”
She nodded. “I know. I was just thinking how you looked really nice in the leather trousers you were wearing last week.”
Narcissa smiled at that. “Thank you, I was actually trying them on for a fancy dress party your cousin Sirius’s girlfriend invited me to. She’s a very, very pretty witch who works as a model for the mundanes.
“Your mum told me that you’ve begun developing the Black talent?”
Nymphadora nodded rapidly as her nose began to swell and her eyes turned green. “So far I can change my nose, my eyes, and the length of my hair!”
“Wow. I was so sad when I started school and i still hadn’t developed the talent. I’m quite jealous of you.”
“I’m sorry.” Dora looked a little depressed until Narcissa said “Never be sorry for something you have no control over, sweetie. Besides, I think I’m pretty enough without the ability. I just didn’t want to have to style my hair every morning.”
That made the little girl giggle.
With their meal finished--well, Nymphadora’s, Narcissa only ate a few of the potato wedges, they were just too greasy for her and Nymphadora finished off the rest of her shrimp po’ boy and wedges with Narcissa commenting on how children seemed to be bottomless disposals--the two headed back to London to get the girl her new party dress to go to her cousin on her father’s side’s birthday.
The girl ended up selecting a pretty sage green party dress that matched her hair and complexion well after Narcissa made some selections for her to choose from.
When they arrived back at Tonks’s, her sister thanked her profusely as Nymphadora modeled her new dress for her mother.
James dropped down in his seat and flipped open his pad of parchment, looking for his notes from the last class on international restrictions on space charms. He sighed as he read. He had violated the law so many times that he’d be in prison for a century easily if he arrested himself. Undetectable expansion charms were illegal when crossing international borders. Every summer he and his parents had gone to Paris and his school satchel had three such charms on it.
He was making notes on proper search and seizure procedures when working around local governments when an owl arrived. He took the letter from it and thanked the bird, giving it a small bit of bacon from his pocket--he had been expecting letters for the past two days.
Sirius dropped down next to him and recognized Somerled’s handwriting. “What’s dad gotta say?”
“They gave the twins haircuts. Evan’s hair was exactly the same as it had been the next morning.”
“He’s got the Black talent?!” Sirius said excitedly. “I propose an arranged marriage between your heir and my cousin, cementing our alliance and increasing the chance of the talent passing on.”
“Sirius, there’s no way I’m arranging my son’s marriage when he’s not even two! And all he’s done is regrow his hair. it might not be the talent at all.”
“James, it’s Evan. Of course he’s gonna have the talent.”
“Why?” James asked, expecting this to be hilarious.
“Because it would be cool for him to be super powerful, a speaker--” Somerled had written them immediately “--, an animagus, and a metamorphmagus! And Merlin knows what else!”
James felt a headache coming on. Sirius had way too many plans for training his godchildren. Though James liked most of the ideas if Sirius had his way his children would have very little time to actually be children excepting in their four hours a day pranking lessons.
“You know those training wands we use?” James said, having an epiphany.
“Yeah?”
“What if we charmed some so that they know all the spells the kids will learn at school and---” he paused, thinking, sketching on a blank piece of parchment.
Sirius waited, knowing interrupting James would derail his thoughts completely, making whatever he was working on take exponentially longer.
Forty minutes later, James flipped the book around, showing Sirius his sketches and notes.
“‘Fake wand,’” Sirius read. “‘Turns red when word and motion are wrong. Turns yellow when just word is wrong. Turns orange when just motion is wrong. Turns green when both are correct. shocks if three consecutive reds in a row.’ That’s a brilliant idea! These could be huge on the market. Hell, they’d be great for first-gens who can’t practice magic[8] over the summer!”
“I didn’t even think of that,” James said, his eyes going wide. “Be right back.”
James took off to find the martial arts instructor and ask him about the wands.
When he returned, James set down a thick wad of parchment filled with notes on the charms and hexes on how their training wands were made.
“They do a lot more than what we were using them for,” James said as Sirius perused the notes, only getting a few things. Much of it was in runic arrays or arithmantic principles on how certain spells were modified.
“Remus will love this,” Sirius said, pushing it out of the way so he could finish his work.
“Oh, he’s sending us some packages as well,” James said, realizing there was a postscript on the back of the pages.
“Of?”
“Just a care package like the ones mum sent us sixth year.” Before she died was the unspoken addition.
“Think it’ll have porn like the ones from your dad?” In their seventh year Somerled had had one of his male secretaries go into London and get special items for the care packages including the aforementioned porn, mundane liquors, and candies. James had developed a taste for jelly babies and jägermeister.
James shrugged and turned back to his work.
They finished up and went on to the next class.
It was late that evening when James fell onto his bed and grabbed his sheet, balling it up and covering his face with it, soaking the tears as they came. It was his anniversary and he had spent the majority of the day hitting himself with cheering charms just to get through it without AK’ing himself.
Taking the sheet off, he stared at the ceiling.
She would have probably been in labor today too, he mused. Lily had been two months pregnant[9] when she died. They were going to wait and let their parents know at Yule.
Somerled plastered a polite look on his face and used a customized spell to immobilize his face that way then cast a silent cheering charm on himself. This session of the Sacred Wizengamot[10] was full of those who had been at least sympathetic if not actual supporters of Voldemort screaming about persecution.
Finally, he snapped. “The winners write the history, you fools. Your little degenerate half-blood--oh, we know who he was and WHAT he was--lost, he died at the hands of a first gen witch--”
The screeches from the Purists drowned out his assertion that she was his much cherished daughter-in-law as they said it was his grandson who was victor, trying to salvage some of their dignity. Losing to a Half-blood was at least tolerable to them.
“QUIET!” bellowed Hyram Wivernchoker, the current Merlin’s Chancellor. “Clan Chieftain Potter, you spoke out of turn. For that, this evening’s refreshments are on your knut. As for the rest of you, quit squabbling like Mundanes,” he hissed the last. “We are disappointed that Wizards and Witches of such excellent breeding are incapable of acting like it.” A fair few looked subdued at the dressing down. “Today’s session, the 14,679th meeting of the Sacred Wizengamot, is now ended.”
They began to file out, a handful stopping to speak with Somerled, some glancing warily at his sword and shield bearers. While they were ostensibly just to carry the items, some recognized the two as champions of Combat Dueling[11].
“Sir?” Chicky Martinet, his sword holder, asked.
“Yeah?”
“Jacoby--” the shield holder “-- and I were wondering, will we be teaching the twins to duel?”
“I had thought to bring in a dueling specialist but if you’d like, we can have you do it.”
They both nodded and fell into step behind him. “We think it’s for the best, my lord[12].” They were one of the few who had been told the secret. “And the Potter Art[13]?”
“They’ll be started in that as soon as they’re four,” Somerled said.
Somerled led them to Drinks Cabinet, a wardrobe on the wall that was actually the door to the bar in the building.
Inside, every member of the Sacred Wizengamot were in small clusters, drinking on the Potter knut.
His Sword and Shield holders settled against the wall, accepting goblets of sparkling water from the scantily clad[14] witch who smiled at them both with a much warmer smile than the fakes given to the leering old men around them.
Somerled accepted his peppered mead and took a sip, smiling slightly. He had formulated this mead himself as a young man just out of Hogwarts, his first job given to him by his grandfather. He had done very well, surprising the old man and developing a dozen more flavored meads, including their most famous, a chocolate orange mead that had taken the magical world--and had done very well in Scotland’s mundane pubs--by storm.
“Ah, Sommy, how are you?” asked Morris Campbell, the only Magical Clan Chieftain from the Lowland Clans.
“I’m good. Once I’m done here, I’ll go home and help my son’s mother-in-law feed the grandchildren then I think I’ll open a bottle of elf-wine the day he was born to toast my son’s anniversary.
“Sixty was a good year,” Campbell said thoughtfully. “Though I prefer 64.” His own firstborn was born that year.
“She’s starting her last year this year, right?”
He smiled happily. “Yes. She just scraped into sixth but she’s tapped to be head girl Minerva told me. Hasn’t told her yet.”
Somerled made a mental note to send a couple bottles of 64 elf-wine to celebrate her being head girl and some fortified butterbeer for her birthday.
“I had a question for you, actually,” Campbell said. “I’ve got a few families in Loch Morar that are looking to relocate to England. Two are good vintners, the others not so sure of. Think you might need some new people?”
“Send them owls with my contact, I’ll have them interviewed.”
They clasped forearms.
Albus walked down to the great hall and stood in the doorway, looking in, watching the seventh years doing their theoretical final in Potions. Slughorn saw him and walked along the students, looking at people’s parchments then joined Albus at the rear. “Headmaster,” he said softly.
“Horace. How goes it so far?”
“From what I saw, about 85 percent. I think my change for this year’s syllabus has been a boon.”
“Very good,” Albus said. “As soon as the scores come in, we’ll have tea and look them over.”
Slughorn nodded and went back to walking amongst the students.
Albus continued his walk to the outside of the grounds and looked around. Students finished with their tests were out lazing around under the trees, a handful were on the charmed smaller lake, ice skating, while four were sitting on the dock, paddling their feet, and a number of first and second years were chattering away as they picked berries from the vines that acted as a barrier between the forbidden forest and the greens.
He looked over to the quidditch pitch and smiled. Five students were lined up then they were off, flying towards the first ring in the sequence of 43 rings that were used for broom racing[15] by students.
He smiled as the students barrel rolled over him, flying through the second ring atop the Astrology tower.
Walking along, he soon found himself near the first years as they ate strawberries, blueberries, and white grapes straight from the vines.
“Headmaster?” a voice said after he passed them.
He turned and gave them his patented first year smile with twinkling eyes. It always helped them get over the nervousness.
“We were reading Hogwarts a history--” Albus nodded at that, noticing the girl’s ribbons in her hair were blue and gold, meaning she was likely a Ravenclaw “--and it said you received three Service Meritorious to Hogwarts badges but they’re not in the trophy case. We were wondering what for?”
“Sadly, they seemed to have been stolen sometime in the thirties. I received the first in my third year for finding a lost first year who had a illness that made him unresponsive and in a coma like state. Do you know what a coma is?” They all nodded. “My second was for donating significant time to the restoration of Hogsmeade after a horrible fire. The third was for very good grades. I finished my OWL in potions before beginning school as my mother was a potion mistress and we would sit with her and learn because she hoped we would follow in her steps. Because of that I was able to finish my mastery in Potions while at Hogwarts. It’s why Nicolas Flamel accepted me as research fellow.”
They all nodded excitedly as he asked, “Want to know the thirteenth use for dragon’s blood?”
He leaned down and they all crowded around to hear him whisper, “It keeps the dragon alive.”
The all burst into giggles at that as he chuckled. “Continue on with the berry picking my young charges.”
He continued walking, following along the edge of the forest until he came to Hagrid’s home. He nodded to the half-giant and the man invited him in for a sherry.
Forty minutes later, after a large sherry--Hagrid’s sherry glass held over a pint---that left his cheeks fairly red he continued on, passing the paddocks and hidden breeding field where dragon eggs were raised during seventh year Care of Magical Creatures. He continued past that, nodding to the stonekin guards that watched the entrance to Aglarond, stopping the students attempts to enter the city.
Beyond that, he passed the entrance to the ministry training center higher up the mountain that backdropped the castle. It was where the ministry employees fulfilled their post-Hogwarts two year training and the Aurors had most of their three year training.
He eventually made it to the front gates and resisted the urge to amble down to his brother’s pub for a half. Even having reconciled in the early fifties, they still spent little time together.
Albus sighed softly, thinking about the paintings of Ariana and her etherealness. They had been broken by her early death and hadn’t functioned as they should have due to the painter scamming the Dumbledores. Aberforth had done a number of years in Azkaban’s medium security wing for torturing the painter.
James put his anti-cheat quill down and used the curing spell to make the parchment dry faster.
Done, he handed it off to the proctor and left the room, dropping onto a bench to wait for Sirius to finish.
“James Xylophone?”
He stood, coming to attention when he realized it was Vice-Magus Dresdol, the wizard in charge of all Blackguards in Western Europe.
“Yes Sir. May I be of service?”
“Where’s your friend?”
“Still taking his test. He’s a slow writer, bad quillwork so he takes his time.”
“Both of you, my office, tomorrow at zero nine.”
“Yes Sir.”
Dresdol walked off and James slumped down, yawning.
Sirius walked out, yawning as well when he saw the remnant of James’s.
“Tomorrow Dresdol wants us in his office at nine am. What did you do?”
“I haven’t pranked anyone. That didn’t deserve it. And you know all those.”
James chuckled.
------
Sirius folded the parchment and slipped it back into the envelope, shocked at how filthy minded Lubhasa could be. I can’t wait to get home, he thought, looking at his watch. Three more days of tests, a handful of duels over two days, then a week on an island, fighting their way through a lot of very good hit-wizards.
He pushed it aside and went to see what was for breakfast, still unused to the Swedish breakfast of sandwiches.
He found James with a bowl of porridge and jam and got the same for himself. “You remember how we used to talk about doing a Grand Tour when we finished school? Seeing the world?”
“Yeah?”
“Sandwiches for breakfast would have sent me back to Ol’ Blighty immediately.”
James dropped his spoon laughing. “You loved Lily’s breakfast wraps,” he said after he calmed.
“Big difference. She didn’t put fish bait on them.”
“You’ve had caviar at some of dad’s events a number of times,” James reminded him.
“Yeah, on a bit of buttered rye toast that I knew it was there.”
James rolled his eyes and finished his bowl then looked at his watch, a battered, magically customized, Omega Lily had had made for their wedding.
James fingered it as they left and walked to the Vice-Magus’s office, smiling at the memory of waking up to find Lily stripping off his battered and broken watch--he had put a tempus charm on it so he could still tell time even if all the other functions no longer worked--and replacing it with the new one and telling him she had meant to give it to him after their ceremony.
“Come in,” came from the door as they approached.
Inside, Dresdol nodded at them then pointed towards two boxes. “Your dad sent those. Please remind him that some of those items are illegal to send over international lines?
“As for why I needed to see you, we haven’t had a team in the United Kingdom in nearly ninety years. We want to send you back with a senior Blackguard. After two, three years, we’ll advance you up and you’ll be our agents there with an international team. Your Ministry is unhappy about it but sod them.”
“How many?”
“Eventually fifteen, twenty, operating all throughout Europe but based in the UK.”
Minerva watched the last of her students file out of the Great Hall then resisted the urge to run up to her own offices.
She made a staid way up to her office on the seventh floor and found one of the house-parents from Gryffindor waiting for her. “Good afternoon Wizard Gaiman. How is your wife?”
“Good. Amanda’s taking our first years and a few others down to the berry patches, teaching them how to make preserves.”
“Ah, we did that when I was in first year too,” Minerva said, musing on her own making of preserves. It was one of the many impromptu lessons taught by the house-parents of the various houses of the school. While there were elective courses and clubs that concentrated on skills like that, not every student took them but most students jumped at the little events like berry picking and preserve making.
“I needed to let you know about some problems in the common room last night.”
She listened as he told her about the party he had broken up where he had found two young witches locked in a closet together.
“It’s not our duty to do anything about that,” Minerva said. “Our job is only to make sure they’re safe and properly educated. Their morality overall is up to their parents. But thank you, anything else?”
He shook his head, surprised she didn’t ask who or have anything else to say about the witches that were witch’s witches.
As soon as he left, she took down her books on the animagus transformation, her own diary on her work on it--four years of her life post-Hogwarts--and some Transfiguration texts that dealt with the transformation in their footnotes or appendices.
It was nearing dinnertime when she found the reference she was looking for. A witch who had finished the transformation the first time when she was seven without any training.
She wrote a note to the census department of the Ministry, checking to see if the witch was still alive. She had been born in 1861 after all.
James pulled himself up the shore and groaned in pain. The waves had battered him against the rocks as he had swum for land.
He saw a thick copse of trees and hid under those, drying himself off then transfiguring his robes into thick cotton trousers and a long sleeve turtleneck with dark brownish-green blotches.
He covered his face with some transfigured makeup to break up those outlines and began creeping through the woods, looking for the point where he and Sirius would meet.
------
Padfoot paddled onto the shore, mostly ignoring the rain until he was under the cover of the tree canopy then he shook himself, breathing in deeply, trying to find James’s scent.
When he caught it on the air, he nodded and headed towards the point where they had discussed meeting up if they were separated during the infiltration.
------
James scratched Padfoot’s back and moved away.
Padfoot shifted back into Sirius and James dried him off then transfigured his clothing for him.
“Catch any other scents?” James asked softly.
“At least nine people, two of them likely witches, one of those is I think Instructor Antoinette.” James could hear the smirk in his voice. Antoinette was gorgeous and had already fallen twice for Sirius’s overly flirtatious manner before realizing he was a recruit and not just a random wizard in a pub.
“Anything useful?”
“Sulphur from hot springs, serious amounts of bat shit, and lots of coconuts.”
“After this, we’re going to Fiji for three weeks,” James said. After they finished the training they had three weeks leave before starting their job.
The two shifted back to their animal forms since they were better suited to the environment and began making their way through the forest, Padfoot on point, occasionally scouting ahead to find better paths for the larger frame of Prongs.
------
James had shifted back to his human form once they had gotten within a kilometer of the village while Padfoot remained as is, taking long hard sniffs of the air, using his ears to inform James of potential issues, a skill they had developed post-Hogwarts before the Potters had gone into hiding.
“A boy and his dog,” James whispered teasingly, making Padfoot freeze then lift his left leg as if he was going to urinate on James’s.
James kicked him softly. “Don’t even think it!”
The two moved into the shadows, watching a wizard walk by then James snapped out a whispered “Petrificus totalis” then transfigured him into a hedgehog using Fijian, locking him that way until someone used a Dumbledore level Finite Incantatem or used the same language to unlock it.
James sent up an invisible flare--only the evaluators would be able to see it with custom charmed spectacles--and they continued on, Padfoot still on point, sniffing the trails of the enemies while James shifted in and out of the shadows, wishing he had been able to learn the Shadow Walker ability Potters had once had back when they were thieves and assassins.
Padfoot alerted him to a new scent on the air and they fell back into a shadow, watching a house elf pop into the yard of a house and begin moving the potted plants under the awning of the house.
The house elf looked their way, its eyes going wide, then it snapped its fingers, disappearing.
Padfoot moved in to the yard to investigate while James had a fleeting thought about becoming a thief, using the fidelius charm to hide the homes he wanted to rob from their owners.
Shaking off the thought of becoming a ‘gentleman thief’ as Padfoot returned, signifying nothing of importance had been found, they continued on, stunning and transfiguring the hit-wizards they came across.
Padfoot shifted back into Sirius and grinned. “I never understood the reason for this test,” he said, looking down at Antoinette, the last of the nine. “I mean, we’re Aurors, why are we doing combat simulations?”
“Because occasionally you need to go into combat situations,” one of the evaluators said as she flew down to where they stood.
“You two work well together,” she said. “The animal thing was unexpected.”
“Yeah, we didn’t register because we were in the middle of a war and you don’t require it.”
“Well don’t register now. You’re beyond the petty requirements of the British Ministry of Incompetence. And you’re also in. Go get some sleep, you meet your boss tomorrow.”
Minerva opened the letter and read it slowly. The witch was showing signs of dementia but her youngest great-granddaughter had gone to Hogwarts and was more than happy to send along her grandmother’s diaries on the subject once she figured out which ones they were.
Minerva smiled and penned back a short reply, thanking the young witch for her reply and work.
She tucked the envelope into her animagus[16] research and hoped the witch would be able to find it soon.
James and Sirius accepted their new robes, dark grey and made of Ukrainian Ironbelly hide, artificially darkened from the shimmery metallic grey of the dragon’s natural hue.
They twitched the hoods into place and the clasps on the front closures, activating the magic of the hood, hiding their face behind the darkness spell that was enchanted into the silk lining of the robes.
All forty three graduating Blackguards were soon enrobed and hidden in shadow as fireworks began to explode above the ceremony, spelling out the graduating class of 1982.
Hoods were pulled back as house elves began circulating with trays of drinks.
“So glad this is done,” James sighed. “I miss my kids.”
“I miss your kids too,” Sirius said. “Especially since they’re probably mine.”
James punched him in the stomach, just hard enough to remind Sirius that cuckold jokes were only funny when they weren’t about him.
Sirius chuckled weakly as he rubbed his stomach.
Severus Snape nodded politely to the new house-parents, Pierre and Marie Goethe. Being the new head of the House was disconcerting for him though Professor Slughorn had been happy to finally step aside and concentrate on potions instructing since Potions was too demanding to teach while running a House.
“Is there anything specific you need of me?” he asked the two.
“I don’t believe so,” Marie said. “Pierre?”
“I believe we’ll be okay. Last year we spoke with Ari and Jacob a lot, trying to learn about this because we really wanted this job.”
Severus nodded. Being the house-parents meant that former students would have three to five years of access to the library and a chance to build up funds without having to pay rent or any other expenses. Being the head of house meant much the same though he also had access to subsidized potion supplies and; though the Headmaster had made the majority off-limits to him--rightfully so, Severus would only admit to himself; nearly unlimited access to the Forbidden Section of the library.
“Very well. You were both in NEWT potions were you not?”
They nodded. “Then perhaps you should restart the potions club. I do not have the temperament to run it or teach I have learned.” Slughorn had asked him to help out as an assistant the previous year but he had found himself unable to do the hob.
He finished up the little bit of paperwork they needed to do then Severus left the Slytherin common room to find his constantly moving quarters, sure that the bastard Potter had done it before disappearing[17].
James and Sirius were finishing packing Sirius’s stuff when there was a knock on the door then it was pushed open the rest of the way. “Black and Potter?” While Sirius had been unofficially adopted and many knew him as Black-Potter, his legal name was still just Black.
“Yes,” James said, using his wand to make Sirius’s socks dance into his duffle in a conga line, looking the woman over.
“Nice wand-work,” she said. “I’m Auriella Mitzengard, your new boss. Call me Auri in private, Mitzengard in public please.”
“James,” he said. “And this is Sirius. He likes to be called Chunky.”
“I do not like to be called Chunky. He likes to be called Late For Dinner, though.”
She bit back a laugh, her lips twitching. “I read your files. I’d be shocked at all the things you got away with but it makes sense considering how talented you two are. How come your other friend, the werewolf Lupin, right?” The nodded. “Why isn’t he here as well?”
“Our country is a bit too racist towards his type. So I hired him as my regent. It means one of the oldest, darkest families is now run by a Werewolf, voting and acting quite light.”
She nodded. “I’ll spend the next three weeks looking for a place to live in--” She paused when James jumped up and turned to Sirius.
“The houses. We’re gonna have twenty Blackguards eventually. We can have them all living under one huge fidelius with each home charmed with their own.”
“Fidelius?” she asked.
Sirius explained what the charm was. “Merlin, how much power does that take?”
“A lot,” James told her. “Dumbledore did the charm on the block, we could handle the houses together possibly.”
“How does the secret work?” she asked.
James told her.
“And this is the secret you’re living under?”
James and Sirius both nodded. “Interesting. So if I start putting evidence together, I’d forget what I was doing?”
“Yes.”
“This is a criminal’s dream spell.”
Sirius nodded. “James has been musing about using it on homes of people he despises and becoming a gentlewizard thief.”
She raised an eyebrow as James smacked Sirius. “I was not musing, it was just an idle thought.”
She chuckled. “Right then, how do I see this home you’re hiding?”
“Grimmauld Park is the place to be,” Sirius said, giving her the secret once James finished a privacy charm on the room.
A/N: I follow the actress who played Lavender on twitter and she does these ultra depressingly amusing cartoons and for some reason, I just can’t help but imagine her sitting in a dark room, furiously typing away, penning the most massive and smuttiest Harry Potter/Lavender Brown Ron-bashing fanfic ever written in between these cartoons.
1: JKR used celtic wood significances(which seem to vary wildly depending upon the source), such as available on thegoddesstree dot com or wand_wood on the harry potter wikia. Looking at that page, Bellatrix’s, the Elder Wand, and Riddle’s with it’s bone handle are all especially cool designs but it’s surprisingly Hermione’s and Ron’s first hand-me-down wands that I think are the coolest designs. As for Hermione’s, in this story she along with Harry and Neville will have their wands customized like Sirius’s was as explained last chapter. Their cores love them but the wood resonates at the wrong frequency for them.
2: This isn’t something I see in a lot of fics and i wish I did more. it’ll be a big part of the martial arts in this chapter and the story overall.
3: The doe references to her always annoyed me since female red deer which is the distaff of what a stag, a male red deer, are called hinds(well, I think at a specific age they become hinds, it's been a while since i studied taxonomy), not does. [4]
4: Actually, that she’s a doe/hind is a pet peeve of mine in every fic that mentions her animagus training. Does Hermione’s otter (aside from the Patronus OTTER subconscious choice that JKR made) fit Harry’s stag or Ron’s terrier? No. So why would the animagus form also have her be so linked to someone she’s known after her formative years? I should change it to something else but I’ll leave it at least for now. if I do change it, perhaps she was becoming something like a dinosaur(She’ll have wanted to be an archaeologist before learning about magic and then a mediwitch or a cursebreaker in this AU post riddle)? if so, that’ll be the fuel for one of harry’s ideas later on.
5: Pomfrey will be the head of the hospital wing with 2-3 other healers under her and her title won’t be nurse. Theirs will be but hers will be Mediwitch or something different. She’ll also teach an elective for combat medicine/pre-med kind of class. I always presumed st mungos got thought up after the characterization and she couldn’t easily retcon her title. I’ve always assumed she was a mediwitch who had retired after x years and taken the job at the hogwarts as many people do.
6: Yeah, it’s a reference to Lord of Caer Azkaban. I must have skipped past reading that story a bajillion times until eventually I had read everything else of Rorschach’s Blots multiple times and finally opened it up. The beginning needs some SERIOUS editing and I think it’s he who consistently uses loose instead of lose but he writes some seriously funny stuff. Especially his Agent O(THAT SEDUCTION SCENE!!!!) and Harry Potter/Hellraiser crossover (though the deaths of the Death Eaters were a bit weak, no true artistry). Probably the most cliché bit in the story at the moment but they’re only used on their properly, no one else ever gets to see them being used. If anyone else even knows about the demon steeds and the Potters, they will think it’s just a rumor.
7: Interestingly enough, whenever I pull a pair of aces and a pair of eights in poker games, I usually end up cleaning out at least one other player on that hand instead of getting shot in the back.
8: In canon it’s stated that magic born students can’t be tracked due to the magic around their homes which means only muggleborns are forced to forgo magic all summer. Students like Neville, Draco, and Ron(psshht, as if he would!) could practice their magic all summer if they wished which it’s obvious Draco does, specifically dark magic. Sick, sadistic little sociopath.
9: Another fanon issue. In reality, I think they’d be a lot more careful. I’m fairly sure that Harry in Canon was likely an accident. And if so, they’d be even more careful, probably mixing the rhythm method, pulling out, AND some sort of contraceptive while their world is at war and they’re soldiers in it. (Or anal. It was THE method of birth control for significant periods of time, especially since most religions saw effective and healthy methods of birth control--condoms--as sinful and immoral--yet condemning someone to a slow death of syphilis was just fine.)
10: A minor retcon of name though(I don’t think i need to actually fix it in the other chapters?). It is in reference to the Sacred Twenty-eight, the last pureblood families in the early 20th century(that’s the 1 Jan 1901-31 Dec 2000 for those that don’t know). In canon, the Sacred 28 seem to be darker leaning families or those who believe in pureblood mania and the Potters and Weasleys are left off so there are obviously more than 28 families. And it’s heartening to see Shacklebolt on there since he’s not lily white which can lead readers to assume that while their society is prudish, they’re at least not racist in regards to color. Just who your parents are. Ahh, classism.
11: Dueling: one on one, following set rules. Combat dueling, one on an unknown number of opponents. Without rules save no killing or permanent injuries. People still die nonetheless. There are only a handful of champions since few are able to keep their heads in the heat of battle.
12: Ahh, as much as I HATE the Lord fanfics, the Potters do still have an extant title or three, including a Scottish Barony attached to their old home when the Potters weren’t Potters or Peverell blooded so My Lord is a proper courtesy title for him.
13: A variant of Krav Maga, though it existed LONG before Krav Maga did. While it’s usually fought with sword and shield, its bare hand style is violent and effective at killing.
If you’re wondering about the martial art they’re employing in the earlier scene, watch Equilibrium or Ultraviolet(Kurt Wimmer’s, not the british series) and imagine they’re using wands instead of guns. (Or hit up youtube and search ‘gun kata’ and those movies.)
14: Ahh, just like the majority of politicians. Screaming about being family men and good christians, then off to their mistresses.
15: I imagine broom racing as the magical world’s equivalent of either the tour de france or formula 1 racing. (I imagine Harry’s eventual firebolt would be illegal in racing as its just too high end. Everything would be standardized and it’s all about the talent of the magical(or his juicing which will happen at hogwarts. A subplot of magical steroids is just too good to ignore).)
16: I’m making some minor changes to the Animagus transformation but not a lot. It’s still very difficult. No one will complete it with only a year of training. But it is possible for occasionally some people to be natural animagi which means in a moment of anger or fear they’ll change on their own and be unable to change back without help. People who are weak magically can learn the ability but it often requires them to trust someone else who will help mentally nudge them towards it or be hit with transfiguration spells to the form over and over by someone powerful enough until they finally have it engrained.
It will be a meditation and internal magic, not a potion induced thing.
17: Doesn’t know the secret, doesn’t need to. I might be presenting him apologetically but I despise Snape’s character and am sure I’m going to be so happy with what I do to him in this story (it’s undecided at this point).
He’s still a spy but. . . .
Vukk: I went into this in the footnote, though obviously not deep enough.
This is a culture that is stuck in the victorian/regency era due to long lives and little to no reason to innovate(which is mostly why cultures evolve/change)--we see a birthday party for a 600+ year old man in the movie being advertised that isn’t Flamel; the woman overseeing the NEWT/OWL tests oversaw Albus’s and he’s over a century old; and for 115 years old, Albus is incredibly spry.
In that era, only sailors and criminals, both very low classes, would have tattoos and while other magical societies might see body modification as normal--though the chinese foot binding is torture--this is, once again, a bunch of people that are terrified of things that fit outside their worldview. So her views on it? Correct for the society. HELL, i’m fucking shocked that they don’t still believe in phrenology since I recall it being mentioned somehow in relation to Albus’s school years(though that may have been in fanon).
I know body modification is fairly normal. I have acquaintances who are participants in the more extreme versions. BUT scarring yourself to mark how many people you’ve killed? That IS a sign of a disorder.
HappyLady: Hermione will be seen a couple times as she’s growing up to help establish the differences in her life and Harry and Hermione or Hermione and Jazmin will meet at eight or so but it will be brief and quite unmagical. Their substantive meeting will be on the train, much as it was, via Neville.
As for intelligent conversation, he and his sister are good matches for each other intelligence-wise though she leans towards artistry while Harry leans towards languages: both are mathematics oriented(though Harry’s current withdrawn nature will continue until he makes a certain friend I think).
Hermione will be mostly the same as in canon though there may be a major change in why she’s so knowledgeable. Still debating if I want to use it.
Nanettez: I use mundane because its base word means world and one of its synonyms is worldly. It means they are of the world, not an aberration as the earliest magicals saw themselves, created to be shepherds for their magicless brothers. Magicals who prefer this term are honoring those who don’t have magic in their own way. It was really difficult for me to find a term to use and finally capitulated on mundane. had I a better one I might use it instead.
In this AU, muggle’s base word means easily fooled or witless and derived from a spell for changing magicless peoples’ minds.
I can see being offended when being called mundane since some of its synonyms aren’t stellar but sometimes you gotta accept the good with the bad.
Also, imagine you’re a parent taking your child to get her supplies. A wizard bumps into you and calls you a muggle with hatred in his voice. You may not know it’s derivation but you know it’s an insult and you know he doesn’t like you for a reason you don’t know/understand.
This will be referenced when Hermione learns she’s a witch too.
Apocrypha means writings of unknowable authenticity. It has nothing to do with the bible in this case. If it might be related to the bible and I don’t specifically spell out its relation, then it’s not related.
The luna bit is a typo, fixing.
In this AU, he’s a contemporary of ollivander. Both were trained by Ollivander’s father, both hate each other for various reasons. yes, ollivander thinks a lot of himself but it’s warranted. He is as good as he thinks he is, even if he is creepy. He’ll show up more later when the twins become interested in wandcrafting and they visit his shop to ask questions.
Normal names? Like what? Longbottom? Bagshot? Lovegood? Slughorn? And I wanted him to be called last at the sorting ceremony for a fairly specific reason. He basically ruined the sorting for anyone whose name came after Potter since it’s all anyone would have been talking about(Zabini’s still screwed and will likely be neutral in this AU as I think he was in canon?). And i like xylophones. I used to have a gorgeous balo from West Africa.